Study: IT Spending Increased in Second Quarter

A study conducted by Maven Wave Partners suggests that corporate IT spending increased 6 percent during the second quarter - a surprise considering researchers had predicted a 3 percent dip.

CFO World reports that the major underlying reason for the 6 percent increase in corporate spending on information technology was the 9.1 percent bump in IT workforce spending, according to the study.

Maven Wave said that it had expected a smaller gain because it believed the large increase during the first quarter would naturally lead to companies decreasing their spending in order to strike a balance.

"Now that actual numbers for the 2Q 2011 are in, it’s clear that despite our conservative estimates, and despite a slight tap on the brakes in first quarter for software spending, IT spending growth overall continued at a blistering pace," the report said, according to CFO World.

With an increase in IT spending, there are a number of steps that CFOs with information technology responsibilities can take to ease their budgets and free up even more capital, Business News Daily reports. One such method is to enforce vendor performance penalties, which are part of contracts that help ensure the vendors are complying with service agreements.